Kissing Maggie Silver (4 page)

Maggie shook her head.
“From the way he was teasing me I know nothing has changed. He still sees me as little Maggie, someone to take care of for a week or two until he sets off on his travels again, and I’m not prepared to let him do that. I’m not going to let him break my heart all over again.”

* * *

Much later, in bed and unable to sleep, Maggie remembered June’s words and sighed. What if her sister-in-law was right and Ruairi really did find her attractive. Where did that get her? Into a short relationship that’s what, and then he would be off across the world and she would never see him again. No! Her first instinct was right. She was definitely not going out to dinner with him, not unless everyone else came too.

Chapter
Three

Her cell phone rang early the following morning while she was searching under her bed for a lost shoe. She wriggled backwards on her stomach but not far enough so that she banged her head when she tried to sit up. She was still cursing and rubbing the bruise when she picked up her phone.

“It doesn’t sound like a good morning at your end,” Ruairi chuckled.
“Did you get out of the wrong side of the bed?”             

“No, I was crawling out from under it,” she said ruefully, wishing her heart hadn’t done a sudden back flip at the sound of his voice. She was feeling irritated with herself because
, in the clear light of morning, she knew she wasn’t really going to refuse his dinner invitation at all despite of her protestations to June. At some time during the night her heart had overruled her brain and now the only thing she wanted to do was to see him again.

“How’s your mother?” she asked, playing for time.

“She’s fine although she is a bit tired today. She really enjoyed yesterday though. Meeting up with so many old friends did her good.”

“I’m glad.
I’ll phone her this afternoon to arrange a lunch date for later in the week.”

“Well that’s partly why I’m calling.
Yesterday she was buoyed up by wine and excitement; today she’s feeling a bit sorry for herself. She’s worried that you don’t really have time for lunch. She thinks you were just being polite when you agreed to meet her. I told her not to be so silly but she says she’s too old for someone as young as you to want to bother with her, so I’m…um…sort of moving things along.”

Maggie sank onto her bed, horrified.
“Surely she knows I’m looking forward to spending some time with her. She was like a second Mum to me when I was small. Why on earth would she think I’m just being polite Ruairi?”

“Probably because she’s spent too much time alone since Dad died.
She’s forgotten that there are people who love her. She hasn’t made many friends in Ireland because Dad became ill almost as soon as they got there so all her time was taken up with nursing him.”

“In that case she
definitely needs to move back here and I shall tell her so when I see her this lunchtime,” said Maggie firmly, completely forgetting her angst about Ruairi as her warm heart went out to the woman who had been so kind to her when she was a little girl.

She heard the smile in his voice as he replied.
“Shall I tell her one o’clock?”

“No! Tell her twelve. Then we can have a drink first. Maybe that will prove to her that I really do want to see her.”

“Thanks Maggie. And on Monday evening it’s dinner at six. I’m afraid your brothers have pre-empted my invitation by organizing an early meal for everyone at the local Chinese restaurant. Apparently it’s a send off for your parents on the night before their cruise, which is why it’s so early. Marks says they have a plane to catch later in the evening.”             

“Fine,” said Maggie, too brightly.
“I’ll be there.”

* * *

That’ll teach you to be careful what you wish for she told herself crossly as she ended the call. Now you can go to dinner with Ruairi O’Connor without any worries at all. With your dear devoted brothers around there is no chance he’ll ever see you as anyone but their aggravating little sister, so situation solved.

She wished he hadn’t proved her point so thoroughly though.
She had spent hours fretting about how her heart would cope on a date alone with him and now he had made it pretty clear that he had been quite happy to include everyone else all along.

* * *

Despite her irritation about Monday’s plans, she thoroughly enjoyed her lunch with Marie O’Connor. The older woman was interested in everything that Maggie had done since she last saw her, and she wanted to know about her plans for the future too. As Maggie had known she would, she understood completely why she wanted to travel before she settled down, although she could also see the other side of the story.

“Your family are upset because they don’t want to lose you,” she said when Maggie told her how everyone was reacting to her plans.
“They’ll worry about you all the time you’re travelling, whereas if you’d agreed to get married to Graham you would have stayed close by and been safe.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Maggie’s stormy grey eyes flashed
with irritation. “Staying put has no guarantees at all.”

“I know that only too well my dear,” Marie O’Connor shook her head sadly.
“But believe me I also know how your family feels. When Ruairi first decided to travel it broke my heart.”

You and me both, thought Maggie with an inward sigh.

“I behaved like a fool. I was so sure he would have a terrible accident and I’d never see him again that I could hardly eat for weeks before he went. Then, once he’d actually gone, I spent every spare moment waiting for a postcard or a phone call, and I can tell you they were few and far between because he was a young man with the whole world to see. Of course when he finally came home for a visit and I realized he was a man, not the young boy I still held in my heart, I stopped worrying so much. Finally I understood I had to let him go.”

“And now?” Maggie suddenly wanted to talk about Ruairi,
wanted to learn everything there was to know about him.

“Ah
, now.” She looked wistful for a moment before she continued. “Now he’s seen everything he ever wanted to see, he has a career he loves, he’s successful, and yet despite all that, I know he’s not happy. Sometimes I see such a sad look on his face that it breaks my heart.”

“But why?” Maggie asked, surprised at this sudden insight into a man who appeared to be so confident and cheerful.

“Oh he’s not going to confide in me my dear. He might tell you though.” Suddenly she grabbed Maggie’s hand. “That’s it! He always talked to you didn’t he? Maybe you can find out what’s wrong and help him.”

* * *

“Just great!” muttered Maggie twenty minutes later as she left the hotel. “Now I’m being set up as Ruairi’s counselor! Well it’s so not going to happen when I can’t even counsel myself.”

She was so busy thinking about her dilemma as she retrieved her sunglasses from her bag and pushed them onto her nose, that she failed to notice someone approaching from the opposite direction until she bounced off a very hard chest.
A strong arm stopped her from falling but her glasses were knocked askew and she dropped her bag.

“Ouch! That hurt!” She glared up at her assailant.

Ruairi grinned down at her. “Maggie Silver, always in a hurry to get somewhere. Nothing has changed then.”

She didn’t deign to answer. Instead she bent down and started retrieving all the things that had spilled from her bag.
Ruairi joined her, grabbing pens and makeup from under the feet of the people walking by.

“I hoped I’d catch you,” he said as they stood up.
“I’ve a favor to ask.”

“Ask away.” Maggie was very glad the bright summer sunshine gave her an excuse to keep her sunglasses on.
That way she could feast her eyes on him without giving anything away about what his proximity was doing to her pulse rate.

“If you’re not doing anything else this afternoon would you look at some apartments with me?”

For a moment her heart leapt. Was he going to stay around after all? He soon dashed her hopes.

“Johanna, a girl I worked with in New Zealand, is flying in next week.
I promised I’d find somewhere for her to stay but as I spend most of my life in a motor home or a tent when I’m filming, and in a soulless hotel when I’m not, I’m hardly the best person to ask. You’ll have a far better idea of what another woman would like than I would, so if you have a couple of hours to spare I’d really appreciate another opinion.”

There had to be a girl!

“What is she looking for?”

“Oh you know, the usual thing.
Not too expensive and with good transport links to the city. Ideally she wants a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen and living room plus access to a garden, although at such short notice she knows she might not get everything she wants. I’ve lined up a few possibilities with a local estate agent.”

With no plans for the rest of the day and unable to think up a plausible excuse in the time it took
Ruairi to open the door of his hire car, Maggie had mixed feelings as she settled herself into the passenger seat. She wasn’t at all sure her blood pressure was going to be able to cope with spending a couple of hours in such close proximity. She twisted her head slightly so she could watch him from behind her sunglasses.

He was studying a local map; checking out the travel routes for this girl that Maggie already hated; so she was able to watch him at leisure and linger over every detail.
His hair was a long, long way from red she decided, and yet it wasn’t quite brown. It was the warm rich colour of a horse chestnut. And he was big, much bigger than any of her brothers. Big, and tanned, and…

His eyes, a clear hazel and fringed with long, gold tipped lashes, were full of laughter as he turned to speak to her.
“Well, do I measure up?”

She flushed, angry with herself that she had let him see her staring. What was the matter with her that instead of acting normally, like she had when they first met yesterday, she was letting the memories of her silly schoolgirl crush take over?

“Sorry, I was miles away,” she lied. Then, ignoring Ruairi’s chuckle, she turned away and watched the traffic out of the window. The rest of the journey passed in silence and by the time he drew up outside a shabby redbrick building she had regained her composure.

“This doesn’t look very promising,” she said, as they negotiated broken paving stones in the garden path.

Set back off the road, the property was surrounded by a crumbling wall, while all that remained of the gate was a forlorn and rusty hinge.
An estate agent was waiting for them, key in hand. She introduced herself and then led the way inside. The interior was just as awful as Maggie had predicted and they were outside on the pavement again within five minutes.

The next three apartments were all equally dispiriting and it wasn’t until they pulled up outside the last address on the list that things began to improve. Climbing out of the car Ruairi looked approvingly at a large detached house set in a neat garden.

“This looks better,” he muttered in Maggie’s ear as they waited for the agent to unlock the door.

A tour had her green with envy for the unknown Johanna.
The house had recently been divided into four separate apartments, one of which was still vacant. It had the latest kitchen and bathroom fittings, polished wooden floors and pale walls. Maggie loved it all. If she had been looking for an apartment of her own then this was exactly what she would have chosen, right down to the view of the enclosed garden through a wide picture window.

“I love it,” she said, forgetting for a moment that she despised domesticity and intended to travel.

By the time she left them it was quite clear the agent thought they were moving in together. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy here,” she said, shaking hands with both of them. “I’ll be in touch as soon as the tenancy agreement is ready for signature.”

“She thinks it’s for us,” said Maggie crossly.
“You could have put her right about that.”

Ruairi grinned at her. “Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe I wanted her to think I was moving in with a beautiful girl even if she does have a black scowl on her face. It’s good for a man’s ego you know…besides I’m not that bad a prospect.
I am housetrained!”

Maggie decided to ignore the picture his words conjured up in her mind.
She didn’t want to think about sharing anything with Ruairi. She didn’t want to think about Ruairi full stop. It was time to change the subject.

“What’s she like anyway?” she asked.
“Johanna, I mean. What’s she like?”

“Jo
? Tall, fair hair and blue eyes just about covers it. Oh and she’s a zoologist. That’s how I met her. She was working in a conservancy area where I was filming.”

Great, thought Maggie gloomily as she climbed into the car.
Now it’s Jo and she’s not only tall and blonde, she even works with wildlife, just like him. Well if she ever meets me she’ll realize she’s got absolutely nothing to worry about because an undersized primary school teacher is no competition at all.